


To Exist in Pieces

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, a foray into cute kylux I guess, written from a prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 21:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5800807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux is trying to go get his hair cut like a reasonable person, but Kylo Ren has to show up and make it weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Exist in Pieces

If he waited too close to the door, Hux's visitor sensor would go off and alert him to Kylo's presence. He was accustomed to waiting three point six five feet away from the sensor, in the middle of the hallway. This was the route he would take when he left his quarters.

Hux would never learn to expect him when he hurried out into the hallway; his eyes were fixed on his datatab and his attention was far from his surroundings.

He startled, was briefly himself, regained his composure. He glared at Kylo.

“What is it?” he said. 

“You're off-duty,” Kylo replied.

“A ship commander is never off-duty,” said Hux, his eyes steely and his back drawn up straight. “What do you need?”

“Where are you going?” Kylo said. 

“That's none of your business—damn it, Ren!” He swatted the air in front of his face, as if that could stop him. “That isn't funny.” 

“You're getting a haircut,” Kylo replied. “A secret haircut.”

“As I said, Ren.” Hux stepped around him. “It's none of your--”

Kylo grabbed him by the back of his uniform jacket, stopping him in his tracks. 

“We have matters to discuss,” he said. “In secret.”

It disturbed Kylo, the calming effect it had on him when Hux rolled his eyes and sighed and indulged him. 

“Fine,” the older man muttered, turning around and ret-scanning into his quarters. “This had better be interesting.” 

“Perhaps.” Kylo followed him inside. “You should have told me,” he said. “That you would not be in your rooms.”

“As you said, Lord Ren,” Hux replied. “I'm off-duty.”

“It is your habit to--”

“It is my habit to do exactly as I please when I'm off-duty,” Hux snapped. “And if getting my hair cut in peace is what I please, Lord Ren, then that is exactly what I am going to do.” 

“What a strange thing to keep secret.” Behind his mask, Kylo smiled. 

“I wasn't aware I was keeping it a secret,” Hux said.

Kylo reached up and unfastened his helmet from his head. His own hair was lank and damp from a long day of training. He could plainly see it irritated Hux: its length, its mess, whatever it was that made him unable to keep his fingers out of it. 

“Well?” said Hux. “What's so important that you've dragged me back here?”

“It's something people do,” Ren said. “They get their hair cut.”

“Yes,” Hux said, his eye-rolling taking a diagonal slant. “Truly, the Force has imbued you with the wisdom of--”

“Come with me.” Kylo grabbed him by one thin wrist.

Hux pulled back. “Where?”

“Your refresher's bathtub,” Kylo replied. “It's bigger than mine.” 

This evidently embarrassed Hux. “I keep telling you, this apartment's previous occupant was a rather ostentatious--”

“I know you've never used it,” said Kylo. “You would enjoy it.”

Hux blinked, his mouth hanging open for a moment. “I--”

“Fill it,” Kylo said, turning him by his shoulders toward the refresher. 

Hux made an irritated sound and glared back at Kylo as he strode through his living room. Kylo didn't have to use the Force to detect the disturbance in his emotions – the man's ears had a way of going completely red when he was struggling against the power of his emotions.

Kylo followed him into the refresher, stripping his cowl from his shoulders. He ignored Hux as he stripped himself, layer by layer, down to his bare skin. He preferred it this way – preferred to feel the other man's focus on him. It was easy to read, all of the feelings intensified by a strange and intoxicating anger. 

When his clothing all lay on the floor at his feet, Kylo stretched and walked over to the tub. It really wasn't all that ridiculous – just large enough for one or two full-sized people to lay their limbs out inside it. Phasma had once admitted to him that she'd locked Hux out of his refresher more than once in the name of physical therapy, which made her the only person who'd gotten any use out of it. 

Kylo did not stretch out in the bath that was filling from hundreds of small apertures in its sides. He sat down with his knees splayed and his arms resting on the ceramite sides of the tub as he watched Hux glower at him.

“Do I need to send Phasma?” he said. “Make sure you don't ruin anything while I'm gone?” 

“Take off your clothes,” Kylo said. 

“I don't have time for this.” Hux raised an arm, but he paused, looked down at his jacket.

It was more difficult than he had first thought it would be, undoing the hidden snaps that held his uniform closed. He had to squint, use his hands to focus the Force through his body. The effort seemed to annoy Hux even further.

“Put it back--”

It was a gentle stroking motion, peeling Hux's jacket off over the contours of his shoulders. He was tall but finely built, and he worked harder than he admitted on what muscle he had. 

Kylo let him finish removing his own arms from his sleeves. Hux muttered under his breath as the flush of embarrassment spread from his ears to his cheeks. 

His boots were next. Kylo liked to watch the faces he made as he wrestled with the heavy zipper, the leather that was too stiff and too tight. He especially liked the relief he could not hide as he put his boots to his side, started shucking his breeches from his wiry legs. 

Kylo could always tell he didn't like his legs, didn't like his thin calves or his lean thighs or the way his ass curved into his back. He had a pretty body – not an imposing body, not a powerful body, but a pretty one, and someone (not Kylo) had once told him that, and the memory made hatred rise in his throat. 

That word, that feeling – my, what a pretty one you are – followed him like a comet's tail as he closed the scant meter of distance between himself and the tub.

The water was up to his knees by the time he stepped in, frowning at the bubbles on the surface.

“You don't like baths,” Kylo observed.

“You make me sound like someone's show bantha,” Hux snapped. 

His ears were bright red now, and his face was rigid with the effort of forcing himself to meet Kylo's eyes.

“Sit down,” said Kylo.

As the smaller man's knees bent, Kylo held up a hand.

“No,” he said. “Against me.”

Hux rolled his eyes and let out a quiet and indignant snort as he turned around. He sat slowly and carefully between Kylo's calves, his back straight and his shoulders square.

Suddenly and swiftly, Kylo reached forward, wrapping his arms around the smaller man and pulling him to his chest. Hux made a sound that was half gasp, half squawk as Kylo drew him under the water. For a moment, Kylo smiled in a way that he could not remember smiling for a long time. 

“What the fuck, Ren?” Hux snarled as he jerked up above the surface again. “Do you mean to drown me in my own outlandish bathroom?” 

“I like your hair like this,” Kylo said. He had emerged from the water bedraggled, his hair a wet mess clinging to his forehead. 

“Fascinating,” Hux replied. “The rest of the First Order doesn't share that opinion.”

“You can get it cut when we're done here,” Kylo murmured in his ear.

“I can get it cut now,” Hux snapped, but he didn't struggle very hard against Kylo's grip. He had to be reluctant about this. He couldn't admit to the calm that was overtaking his emotions as the water rose to cover Kylo's kneecaps. It would make him less, he thought, make him weaker. He was probably right about that.

“You're unsettled,” Kylo said. “It unnerves you, to have someone think of you in parts.” 

“What?” 

“I like your hair.” Kylo held him to his chest with one arm while he reached behind him for one of the half-empty bottles by the tub that smelled like Stormtrooper. “And your legs.” 

“Thank you for sharing, Ren.” He tried to make it sound as if it didn't bother him, as if being divisible into pieces wasn't the last thing he wanted to acknowledge. “What—for fuck's sake, Ren, what are you doing?”

“They wash your hair,” Ren said. “At the barber's.” 

“They do.” Hux shrunk away from Ren's fingers combing through the wet ginger mess on his head. “Ren, what the fuck?”

“Do I have to hold you down in the water?” he asked. 

“You are insane,” Hux sighed, but he let Kylo push his head gently down back into the water. He even deigned to rest the back of his head on Kylo's stomach, hold still with his ruddy hair floating away from his head like solar flares. Let him run his fingers through it, delighting quietly and briefly in how soft and slick it was against his skin. 

“You don't like to enjoy being touched,” Kylo said.

“Let. Me. Go.” Hux snapped back. 

“I'm not done,” Kylo replied.

“This is why I let them wash my hair at the barber's,” Hux said. “They're not bizarre about it.”  
“You like this,” Kylo said. “I can sense it.”

Hux made an embarrassed noise in the back of his throat. “I—you can see it, Ren, and that's only because you've gotten hard, you insufferable charlatan.”


End file.
